starship-design: Does a one-way mission need mining?

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Kelly wrote:

>>I wasn't thinking of so much of mining. It would probably be more useful to
>>store some amount of refined materials onboard. With smaller equipment these
>>materials and broken (but still rather pure) parts could be made into
>>whatever new parts are needed.
>>(Maybe some of these refined materials could be used in the shielding)
>>Furthermore we wouldn't need to use the same refinement methods used here on
>>Earth. Earthbound economic refinement methods likely have to be energy
>>efficient and usable for bulk amounts, these requirements wouldn't be needed
>>for a starship where energy is supposed to be abundant.
>
>Oh, I was thinking of fuel minning.  If you want to manufacture things from
>local resources, you'll need to do some ore refining.  Since you'll need to do
>more of that for a 1-way mission, you can't save any weight by leaving that
>stuff off.

?? At most we'd need to rebuild the starship. That still is a lot less
material than the fuel. Actually we'd need much less than the whole
starship. Likely most mass of the ship (engine structure, shield, hull,
wall) does not need to be rebuild. That fraction of the mass left could be
stored in a refined but raw form onboard the ship. So not much mining would
be necessary.
(BTW the heavy parts likely are metal, I believe metals can be quite easely
recycled.)

>On the other hand in a one way mission you don't need to do fuel
>minning and processing.  So for the sake of argument I was assuming a couple
>thousand tons of specialized equipment just for that.

Timothy